A Korean Catastrophe

WASHINGTON, 20 July 2003—Much of official Washington is
worried, quite rightly, about the crisis over North Korea’s
nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang’s secret program to make
bomb-grade uranium, its eviction of nuclear inspectors and its claims
to have reprocessed spent reactor fuel for nuclear weapons pose direct
threats to US national security. I encourage President Bush to keep
working with our friends and allies in the region to persuade North
Korea to change course.

In addition to efforts on security issues, we need to address a
parallel humanitarian problem in North Korea that now appears to be
worsening. Up to 300,000 North Korean refugees are stuck in
China. Many of them live in hiding in the border areas of northeastern
China, fearful of being arrested by Chinese authorities and being sent
back to North Korea. Many of the women are exploited by Chinese
gangsters and forced into prostitution or abusive marriages.

A large number of those who are caught face an even worse fate when
they are returned to North Korea. Because leaving North Korea is
considered treason, many returnees are imprisoned, interrogated under
torture and sometimes executed. China’s actions contravene
international conventions it has signed, and Beijing won’t let
the refugees pass on to South Korea. From the flood of North Korean
refugees last year, only a trickle, an estimated 1,200, made it to the
South. Most of them were people who had managed to get beyond the
border area and find a foreign embassy in Beijing.

This refugee problem is caused in turn by another humanitarian
failing, the decade of food shortages in North Korea. In the mid-1990s
a devastating famine struck: Estimates of the number who starved to
death range from 600,000 to more than 2 million. By 1997 North
Korea’s rulers, who hold a political philosophy called juche, or
self-reliance, finally allowed the United States and other countries
to start donating food to ease the suffering, but conditions remain
bleak. Many of the refugees are fleeing simply because they’re
hungry.

Nearly one North Korean child in 10 suffers from acute malnutrition,
according to a United Nations-European Union survey last year, and
four out of every 10 children are chronically malnourished. This is
partly the result of bad weather and poor farming conditions, but the
primary cause is decades of government mismanagement of the economy
and the agriculture system.

Instead of trying to feed its people, Pyongyang is obsessed with
developing nuclear weapons and missiles, and fortifying its 1
million-man army. The CIA estimates that North Korea devotes nearly a
third of its economic output to military expenditures.

The outside world has tried to assist the North Korean people, despite
their government. The United States has donated some 1.9 million
metric tons of wheat and other items to prevent starvation in North
Korea, primarily through the World Food Program, a UN agency. China
and South Korea have also been major donors of food and fertilizer,
and other countries have contributed as well. But there is evidence
that some of the donated assistance never makes it to its intended
recipients, and Pyongyang’s stubborn refusal to abide by
international rules has prevented more aid from flowing.

Unlike all other countries that receive WFP donations, North Korea
does not allow full monitoring to make sure that supplies aren’t
being siphoned off. It won’t permit unannounced inspections, and
won’t even admit inspectors who speak Korean, forcing the WFP to
rely on government-supplied interpreters. Donor countries are weary of
Pyongyang’s game-playing and are walking away. Last year the WFP
got only 80 percent of the amount of donations it requested for North
Korea. So far this year it has received pledges of food amounting to
only two-thirds of what it hopes to distribute.

The United States has provisionally pledged up to another 100,000
metric tons of food aid for this year, less than we have in the
past. That’s not enough, in my view, but Congress and the
administration won’t send additional help until they can be sure
it is getting to the right people. By simply adhering to international
norms, Pyongyang could open the aid spigots.

It is clear that absent a major shift in policies by their government,
desperate North Korean citizens will continue to flee the country. The
United States has repeatedly urged China to live up to its obligations
under the United Nations Refugee Convention, which prohibits the
forced return of refugees to places where they face possible
persecution. China has refused, citing an agreement it has signed with
North Korea to send such ’food migrants’ back across the
border. The administration and Congress must continue to press China
on this point.

As an added humanitarian measure, the United States, along with the
United Nations and other members of the international community,
should demand that North Korea allow the WFP to provide food directly
to the country’s vast, inhumane prison camps, where many of the
repatriated refugees, as well as thousands of other political
prisoners, are kept in unspeakable conditions.

In the meantime, we should authorize the resettlement of some North
Korean refugees in this country, and press our allies to do the
same. If this sparks a greater flow of North Koreans from their
gulag-like country, some would argue, that could help keep pressure on
North Korea or even hasten the fall of the Pyongyang regime, much as
the flight of East Germans in 1989 helped undermine the Communist
system there. International steps to help North Korean refugees would
also be an unmistakable signal to Pyongyang that the world community
will not turn a blind eye to the regime’s systematic human
rights violations and its unconscionable neglect of its people’s
basic needs. Regardless, we should offer resettlement options to North
Koreans because it’s the right thing to do.

These proposals are controversial. Some will draw objections from
Pyongyang, or frankly, from some of our partners and allies in the
region. That is no reason not to act. It is time for the United States
to lead on these issues.

Lugar, a Republican senator from Indiana, is chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.

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